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Guess what? The Indians didn’t save the Pilgrims from starvation by teaching them to grow corn. Thomas Jefferson thought states’ rights—an idea reviled today—were even more important than the Constitution’s checks and balances. The “Wild” West was more peaceful and a lot safer than most modern cities. And the biggest scandal of the Clinton years didn’t involve an intern in a blue dress.

Surprised? Don’t be. In America, where history is riddled with misrepresentations, misunderstandings, and flat-out lies about the people and events that have shaped the nation, there’s the history you know and then there’s the truth.

In 33 Questions About American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask, Thomas E. Woods Jr., the New York Times bestselling author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, sets the record straight with a provocative look at the hidden truths about our nation’s history—the ones that have been buried because they’re too politically incorrect to discuss. Woods draws on real scholarship—as opposed to the myths, platitudes, and slogans so many other “history” books are based on—to ask and answer tough questions about American history, including:

- Did the Founding Fathers support immigration?- Was the Civil War all about slavery?- Did the Framers really look to the American Indians as the model for the U.S. political system?- Was the U.S. Constitution meant to be a “living, breathing” document—and does it grant the federal government wide latitude to operateas it pleases?- Did Bill Clinton actually stop a genocide, as we’re told?

You’d never know it from the history that’s been handed down to us, but the answer to all those questions is no.

Woods’s eye-opening exploration reveals how much has been whitewashed from the historical record, overlooked, and skewed beyond recognition. More informative than your last U.S. history class, 33 Questions About American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask will have you wondering just how much about your nation’s past you haven’t been told.

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Spread among current events and constitutional law, Woods' 33 questions extend his criticism of liberal viewpoints on American history elaborated in The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History (2004). Ideas that the Constitution is a "living" document, that the New Deal ended the Depression, and that foreign aid alleviates world poverty are some nostrums the author critiques, while others are more populist. Should you heed, for example, historians' rankings of presidents? Perhaps as measurements of the history profession's ideological tilt, avers Woods, who holds that such lists favor big-government presidents and slight little-government types such as Cleveland and Coolidge. Woods is also concerned that the concept of states rights is viewed negatively, so several questions probe its con-law pedigree and the assertion that it, more than slavery, is what the South fought for in the Civil War. Alighting rather disconnectedly on "the biggest unknown scandal of the Clinton years," George Washington Carver's scientific significance, and Social Security, Woods is at least consistent in maintaining that Americans' historical awareness is befogged by myths. Marketed through conservative media, the assertive Woods will generate requests. Taylor, Gilbert

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

As historian Thomas E. Woods, Jr., notes on page 78 of this important new book, "the modern state trains its citizens to think" in a certain way. Whether the issue is the role of the State in regulating the economy ... how racial minorities can succeed ... or how we should judge success or failure in a politician, a narrow range of opinions has been deemed acceptable by Establishment Left and Establishment Right. Questions that could lead to different conclusions are ones "we're not supposed to ask."

Tom Woods is out to change that. Picking up where he left off in "The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History," the author again plays Manolete to the Establishment's sacred cows. But he's after more, I think, than just a tasty barbecue.

Some of the questions here are ones people are actively discouraged from answering the "wrong" way -- questions about the causes of the Civil War, the influence of unions, the effectiveness of desegregation as a tool for improving education, or the validity of PC mythology about native Americans. Other questions confront conventional wisdom so solidly entrenched that the questions don't occur to most people in the first place: what if the Depression wasn't a failure of capitalism, and what if the New Deal didn't save us? But the most interesting questions, I think, are the ones you have to look deeply into American history even to discover the context of the questions, so thoroughly have they been buried under official neglect: Why does the Whiskey Rebellion matter; what does the "elastic clause" really mean; or what if the presidency wasn't meant to be what it is today?Read more ›

33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask is a wonderful book through and through. It should upset every public educator that picks it up. The separation between what's taught in our public schools and what Woods maintains is true is absolutely stunning. Cutting a swath through topics about the pilgrims, discrimination, race relations, law, the constitution, labor unions, and even Bill Clinton, 33 Questions is a lesson in civics and history.

What's really scary is that Woods backs up what he writes with sound research and "reasoned reason." I'd be hard put to pick the most important chapter but I do have a favorite or three.

Chapter One, "Did the Founding Fathers Support Immigration?" is an eye opener. Perhaps the most stinging chapter is chapter 3; "Were the American Indians Really Environmentalist?" is the most surprising. According to Woods the native Americans used fire to bend the environment to their purpose. Quoting Woods..." Some indian fires, spreading for weeks at a time over several hundred thousand square miles, utterly destroyed plant and animal life. Grassland fires in the northern plains, for instance, did substantial damage to the buffalo population..." This is certain to raise eyebrows among the environmentalists who insist upon holding the native Americans as the ultimate caretakers of the natural world.

I could go on but the fact is that each chapter is interesting and will absolutely cause debate among all who read.

33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed To Ask is a book that has been needed for a long time. Whether you agree with all the information that is included isn't important. What is important is that there seems to be another side to many of our most dearly held beliefs. In other words, PC history may not be the history we should believe in.

I didn't know how to rate the book: 5 stars because it was interesting and useful "food for thought"? 1 star because a lot it was recycled, either from Mr. Woods' earlier book or other authors and seemed to leave out alternative arguments? Ultimately, I split the difference.

I thought the strength of the book was its focusing on specific issues that could spark further research and awareness. I come from a generation of American schoolchildren that were taught such a reduced version of American history that I wouldn't be surprised if my less historically-minded classmates (which is, frankly, 95% of them) only remember that the American Indians were noble environmentalists who all but wrote the U.S. Constitution, the Civil War was fought in the 1960s to by M.L.K.Jr. to win civil rights, and capitalism is an evil that increased government programs can correct by giving us all more goodies.

Another strength was in questioning commonly accepted - by the average citizen - beliefs in such ideas that the U.S. traditionally welcomed immigrants, or that school desegregation has helped black schoolchildren, or that discrimination is primarily responsible for income differences, or that liberals have always been anti-war/ anti-imperialists.

The weakness of the book, in my opinion, arises from the fact that many questions were either not too important, not too original (i.e., historians have already been asking the questions "you're not supposed to ask" - and not just in recent, obscure books either), a matter of opinion (even more than such questions usually are), or were phrased and answered in such a way that left out some pretty important info.

Is it so important to question George Washington Carver's scientific status?Read more ›

More About the Author

I hold my master's, M.Phil., and Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and my bachelor's from Harvard. I've written numerous books, including The Church Confronts Modernity (Columbia University Press) and two New York Times bestsellers -- Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse, and The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. My two latest books are Rollback: Repealing Big Government Before the Coming Fiscal Collapse and Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century.

My wife and I have four young daughters and live in Topeka, Kansas.

My full biography can be found at www.TomWoods.com/about. My upcoming appearances, in addition to plenty of free audio, video, and articles, are also available at my website.